Do you have what it takes to survive in a hostile world, stuck in a body that is at the same time yours, yet not?

Dangers abound and the learning curve for survival is steep as you step into the pack life of Raptor at Heart. Strangers from around the world suddenly find themselves torn from their lives, timeline and bodies and slammed, together, into the midst of the ancient Cretaceous period, assuming their new lives as velociraptors. Each member of the pack of confused, lost predators retains their personality, intelligence and mind from the life they held before. The instincts of the velociraptor lie buried beneath them, sometimes lurking to the surface and slowly melding into the very personalities of the 'chosen'.

Can these lost souls survive their new lives, or will the hostile world they now inhabit consume them in a spray of blood and become their grave?

Welcome, and thank you for your interest in Raptor at Heart. I would like to write this story as an actual mini novel as we go, so the content you get will be fresh and the actions you take just may influence how it is written, if not your very survival. This bit is a little up in the air but

I'm looking for 4-6 interested role players to join the pack as it begins. Keep in mind, this is very much a survival RP and you will need to think not only as a human, but as a predator and a team to thrive. You are no longer human and, in turn, not everything that your human mind expects you to be capable of will be effective as you learn to handle and tend to your new body and its needs.

All members of the previous group are guaranteed a slot, even if it puts the player count in excess of my new, lower cap. If you're new to my game and want in, please request a slot before they do as I will be moving applications to a wait list after I get 6 players! Note, returning players will simply be included and will not have to go on the waitlist. Example: 4 new players sign up before any of the old group does, and then 6 of the old group sign up, we'd have 10 active players but no further newbies would be brought in until a space opens up.

Stats may or may not be openly given, though your physical form as a raptor will be depicted to you upon your arrival.

Please post here if you are interested, as well as post a human character background, to include your character name, the country you are from, gender, age and a basic background to include the occupation [if any] of your character. This will impact how you become depicted on arrival, though there are no single, identifiable factors that will influence your raptor form; just triggering my inspiration and writing muse.

There will be NPCs initially, though odds are most, if not all of them, will be dead within the first day or two of in game time. The survival, or loss, of your pack members can mean the difference of life and death.

Some specifics:

The velociraptors depicted are based on a mix of scientifically correct velociraptor and Jurassic Parks Velociraptor.

They are intelligent, supporting the factoid of the characters human side continuing to exist.

They are larger than the scientific version of the raptor

They have some of the feathery adornments of the scientific version.

While human characters noted to me might be a specific gender, that does not guarantee your raptor self will be that gender; a decent mix of each will be met.

The active player list will not exceed 6 [excluding special circumstances for our beginning], but if someone dies, anyone waiting to join in will join the pack, though they will not have the same knowledge and experience as those who have been going longer and will need to learn, adjust, etc to catch up...or die.

If no one is 'in line' anyone whose character died is welcome to be tumbled in again as a new raptor, though like anyone joining the game at a later date they will have to 'catch up'. The new raptor will be new to the pack entirely and have no affiliations, possibly even garnering undue distrust, aggressiveness or even violence from their 'old' pack-mates as instincts and time have changed who they are. This applies to complete newcomers as well.

There is no way back to the human world; the changes are all permanent.

Be wary how much you allow your human side to influence you. It can help you at times, though it is equally likely to cause you problems.

The world is a threatening, primal place and dangerous to tackle alone.

There will be unexpected elements introduced as the game moves forward, as well as hints as to how, who and what brought you to the age of dinos and turned you into one.

The story is not locked to a specific age. Any dino that existed has a chance of showing up (and perhaps some that never did!) so I use Cretaceous as more of a thematic wordplay.

NPCs

They can be idiots, and will sometimes/often/always [case pending] need you to survive and learn. NPC's that survive long enough and learn enough will eventually bring benefits to the table to make the effort of keeping them alive etc worth it.

The smart or stupid moves of an NPC can directly impact you and your pack. Perhaps one finds a source of small, easy to catch creatures early on, making it easier to learn to use your raptor bodies. Perhaps another wandered away alone too far and is now fleeing back to camp with a Trex on his tail and wetting him or herself in terror...and possibly causing the trex to go after one of you instead of its terrified prey gets away.

Be wary of an NPCs intentions. They might be learning with you as a pack, but that doesn't mean they can all be trusted.

The NPCs are only 'Alphas' initially, and will in all likelihood not re-assume the position.

More will be added to this as necessary. Feel free to ask any questions you may have or for any clarifications you need!

Player list:

Nikohl (FF4000)

► Show Spoiler

Name: Brigitte
Age: 17
Appearance: Small and wirily strong, with a young face and old eyes.
Info:
Brigitte lives on the streets, and has done ever since she arrived from her home country of Haiti, smuggled in by a boat paid for by her desperate parents. She has always done what she needed to do to survive, and it's worked out ok so far. Once one of the other street rats beat her up and took the sleeping bag she'd been given by a kind passer by, but she's never let anything like that happen again. Sly and cunning, she makes her way through a combination of begging (taking advantage of her innocent wide-eyed appearance) and theft, and several years of eating out of the trash and sleeping in alley ways has made her particularly good at both. She has fleeting, childish dreams of making a fortune and rescuing her family from their poverty, but has the cynical heart of a girl who knows there's no such thing as fairy tales, and you only get what you can take.

Raptor Appearance:

► Show Spoiler

Brigitte:

Brigitte becomes an adult female velociraptor sporting lean muscles; she noticeably weighs less than the others. Her scales are a burnt orange with hint of red overtone, though her belly-to-tail scales are a very light cream color that the red and orange bleed into where they meet. Her feathering is softer, further belaying the agility that comes with her frame. It puffs up more around her eye ridges before merging together atop her head and drifting down her neck and finally spilling out onto her back in near downy fluff. Her tail feathers are fairly long, though the severity seen in some of the other raptors is almost missing and they drape together behind her, forming a scythe shape.

Gathersingredients(008000)

► Show Spoiler

Name: Lauren McKenzie from Bradfield, England. She's 17 years old, goes to school, and she just found out that her would-be-BF (she wants something serious, he's just interested in the carnal aspect of the relation) Jacob might have impregnated her in the night when her parents were out of town two weeks ago, when they ... tried stuff out. (She was late on her period, got nervous, made a test and it was positive. But as people more into this topic might know, there is the possibility of a false positive, too.) Now her world is in turmoil and she doesn't know what to do.

Raptor Appearance:

► Show Spoiler

Lauren becomes a slender muscled female velociraptor. She is full grown, standing about 5' 11" tall, though lacking the muscle mass of a more senior female. Her scale-skin is a typical dark green and mottled brown that fades to a mossy tan along the belly and on between her legs till it nears the tip of her tail. Her feathers are an odd silvery brown, though the feather stock itself is the same green of her scale-skin. They [feathers]are longest on her tail tip and a fine fluff with a few small vanity plumes above the eye ridge. The feathering is thicker along the back of her neck and reduces to a fine fluff before vanishing near the bottom of the back of her neck in a tight V. Three mottled splotches stand out along her spine.

Arch Lich Burns (FF00FF)

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Name: Henry
Male-age 15
He was born in West Virgina.

His interests lie in theatrics and being a magician, many would probably call him mediocre at best but he has fun doing magic in front of friends and family being compleatly over dramatic in the shows. In order to get more money to support his hobby he sometimes goes into the streets to perform he was about to do a disappearing act when...

Raptor Appearance:

► Show Spoiler

Henry will wake to his new form as a small, lithe raptor youth. His opaque white hide is tinted with pink, a coloration that appears more saturated near his joints. Similarly colored pink stripes branch from his spine and taper off before reaching too far down his chest. As an albino, his eyes are also a brilliant shade of pink, though the natural toughness of raptor hide doesn't lead to any normal afflictions albino's suffer from. Black feathering sprouts from his shoulders, tail tip and, in smaller size, eye ridges. A pink splotch on his right cheek roughly depicts a spade, as if from a playing card.

BadgeAddict (Choose your color, grey will be hard to read)

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Name: Bjorn Hanssen
Age: 27
Year: ~ 857 A.D.

Bjorn was a fearless viking warrior who had over the course of his life lost his father, his mother and all of his siblings. Defending a village from constant pillaging was a difficult lot in life but it was the only thing one could do in an effort to have a home for your children to survive in. Unless of course you had no children...no wife, no nearby neighbors, no one at all. The village had been hit hard last summer leaving everyone in the village dead except for Bjorn who had been out hunting. When he had returned to the burning huts and bodies, he swore to revenge his family and village against the ones who had done this...the same ones who had done this every year for the past 3 years. Taking what little supplies he could find from the remains of the village, he headed south along the coast. He made fast progress alone and as he stepped into the village with blood in his eyes he started attacking. Axes in each hand, he ran through the village hacking down men left and right until the villages leader came in sight and suddenly an axe to the back ended his vengeance.

He fell like a stone and the last thing he saw before it all went dark was a blade chopping down toward his face.... At least now I can join my fathers in Valhalla....was his last thought before he died.

Raptor Appearance:

► Show Spoiler

Bjorn appears as a mottled gray raptor with a streak of pale green starting at the base of his neck and running down his spine until it wraps around his tail and tapers off as it approaches the tip. Blood red freckling peppers his thighs, a pattern that also shows on each of his cloudy-white feathers on his shoulders, spine and elbow joints. His body sports a large frame and is endowed with exceptionally well muscled legs.

Bjorn becomes aware as water flows over his feet and tail as his lower half is settled in a shallow stream.

Samwiser(0040FF)

► Show Spoiler

Name: Samuel Clemens
Age: 18
Gender: Male
Country: USA

Sam was a trapeze artist. Worked at a Cirque du Soleil type place. Fairly short, but flexible and strong, he was capable of flying through the air with the greatest of ease. He was doing a doubles routine with one of his coworkers. He had just launched himself off of his swing, arms spread out so she could catch him. Their hands were inches from meeting when...

Raptor Appearance:

► Show Spoiler

Samuel becomes a smaller-than-average adult female raptor; strong, muscular legs compensate greatly for the difference in body size compared to the others[6" or so, I'll let you decide just how much smaller]. Her new form's hide is a gentle blue with two sets of aquamarine haphazardly placed parallel stripes running the length of her body. Aquamarine feathers sprout from her shoulder blades, hips and wrists.

Last edited by Mereneth on Tue Nov 15, 2016 12:40 pm, edited 4 times in total.

as well as post a human character background, to include your character name, the country you are from, gender, age and a basic background to include the occupation [if any] of your character. This will impact how you become depicted on arrival, though there are no single, identifiable factors that will influence your raptor form; just triggering my inspiration and writing muse.

=D You can look at the previous recruitment thread responses if you want a better idea of what i'm after for this part.

His interests lie in theatrics and being a magician, many would probably call him mediocre at best but he has fun doing magic in front of friends and family being compleatly over dramatic in the shows. In order to get more money to support his hobby he sometimes goes into the streets to perform he was about to do a disappearing act when...

Bjorn was a fearless viking warrior who had over the course of his life lost his father, his mother and all of his siblings. Defending a village from constant pillaging was a difficult lot in life but it was the only thing one could do in an effort to have a home for your children to survive in. Unless of course you had no children...no wife, no nearby neighbors, no one at all. The village had been hit hard last summer leaving everyone in the village dead except for Bjorn who had been out hunting. When he had returned to the burning huts and bodies, he swore to revenge his family and village against the ones who had done this...the same ones who had done this every year for the past 3 years. Taking what little supplies he could find from the remains of the village, he headed south along the coast. He made fast progress alone and as he stepped into the village with blood in his eyes he started attacking. Axes in each hand, he ran through the village hacking down men left and right until the villages leader came in sight and suddenly an axe to the back ended his vengeance.

He fell like a stone and the last thing he saw before it all went dark was a blade chopping down toward his face.... At least now I can join my fathers in Valhalla....was his last thought before he died.

His interests lie in theatrics and being a magician, many would probably call him mediocre at best but he has fun doing magic in front of friends and family being compleatly over dramatic in the shows. In order to get more money to support his hobby he sometimes goes into the streets to perform he was about to do a disappearing act when...

Is...is that enough?

Sure. What you give me here just helps me shape the initial story setting and gives you a background to work with since your memory of your past is all that remains of your old life.

I'm in - keeping Brigitte from before, when I'm not on my phone I'll copy paste her details in.

Name: Brigitte
Age: 17
Appearance: Small and wirily strong, with a young face and old eyes.
Info:
Brigitte lives on the streets, and has done ever since she arrived from her home country of Haiti, smuggled in by a boat paid for by her desperate parents. She has always done what she needed to do to survive, and it's worked out ok so far. Once one of the other street rats beat her up and took the sleeping bag she'd been given by a kind passer by, but she's never let anything like that happen again. Sly and cunning, she makes her way through a combination of begging (taking advantage of her innocent wide-eyed appearance) and theft, and several years of eating out of the trash and sleeping in alley ways has made her particularly good at both. She has fleeting, childish dreams of making a fortune and rescuing her family from their poverty, but has the cynical heart of a girl who knows there's no such thing as fairy tales, and you only get what you can take.

nikohl wrote:I'm in - keeping Brigitte from before, when I'm not on my phone I'll copy paste her details in.

Gotcha covered on your raptor, assuming you'd like to retain the same appearance too.

Brigitte:

Brigitte becomes an adult female velociraptor sporting lean muscles; she noticeably weighs less than the others. Her scales are a burnt orange with hint of red overtone, though her belly-to-tail scales are a very light cream color that the red and orange bleed into where they meet. Her feathering is softer, further belaying the agility that comes with her frame. It puffs up more around her eye ridges before merging together atop her head and drifting down her neck and finally spilling out onto her back in near downy fluff. Her tail feathers are fairly long, though the severity seen in some of the other raptors is almost missing and they drape together behind her, forming a scythe shape.

Bjorn appears as a mottled gray raptor with a streak of pale green starting at the base of his neck and running down his spine until it wraps around his tail and tapers off as it approaches the tip. Blood red freckling peppers his thighs, a pattern that also shows on each of his cloudy-white feathers on his shoulders, spine and elbow joints. His body sports a large frame and is endowed with exceptionally well muscled legs.

Bjorn becomes aware as water flows over his feet and tail as his lower half is settled in a shallow stream.

Interested, but won't have time for another four weeks, so I'll save official signup for the event that recruitment's still going on that far along. Which I doubt, but shows of interest are good support.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

Henry will wake to his new form as a small, lithe raptor youth. His opaque white hide is tinted with pink, a coloration that appears more saturated near his joints. Similarly colored pink stripes branch from his spine and taper off before reaching too far down his chest. As an albino, his eyes are also a brilliant shade of pink, though the natural toughness of raptor hide doesn't lead to any normal afflictions albino's suffer from. Black feathering sprouts from his shoulders, tail tip and, in smaller size, eye ridges. A pink splotch on his right cheek roughly depicts a spade, as if from a playing card.
You've got a guaranteed slot, gathers! I wanted it to be possible to have newcomers join without excluding previous players. I believe we currently have two remaining spots for newbies before our total player count reaches 6, after which point no newbies will be brought into the game till space opens. Even after reaching 6, though, all previous players get to join in no matter what; they just count towards the total leading to 6. ^^

Sam was a trapeze artist. Worked at a Cirque du Soleil type place. Fairly short, but flexible and strong, he was capable of flying through the air with the greatest of ease. He was doing a doubles routine with one of his coworkers. He had just launched himself off of his swing, arms spread out so she could catch him. Their hands were inches from meeting when...

Thanks to Arch Lich Burns for the avatar, and Mnementh for the mustache.

Ã”Ã‡Â£Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?Ã”Ã‡Ã˜
Ã”Ã‡Ã² Terry Pratchett

I'm excited for the reboot... but I'm actually kinda sad that our previous characters' actions and achievements will be wiped. We got a lot done in a short time and found out quite a lot of stuff. It's going to be a little awkward re-roleplaying the start without accidentally metagaming. Should be fun though!

(Maybe Brigitte and Lauren will be friends rather than falling out this time, if the initial events go differently )

Lilly: Female - 7 - Very into athletic activities - Was blowing out the candles on her birthday cake in front of her friends.
Raptor Appearance: Raptor female youth, rather similarly mirroring her previous existence in comparable age. Her slight body is pastel yellow with blue speckling running down the length of her spine. Her feathering colors are not evident as they are only just coming in.

Farah House: Female - 31 - Distraught mother - Was desperately clutching a pillow to her chest and trying her best not to cry as she stared at her phone, waiting for a call, good or bad, from the police search teams or her husband who was out with them.
Raptor Appearance: Farah takes on the form of an adult female raptor of average build. Her hide is a cream orange tint with darker orange streaks running down her sides, but seemingly deeper in her hide. Creamy brown feathers fluff out from her eye ridges, shoulder, tail tip and ankles.

Gilroy Vanshoke: Male - 26 - All in the little details - Gilroy looked out into a crowded room as electricity surged through his body, his last thoughts of grim amusement that not one person even flinched as the smell of his own burning flesh filled the air.
Raptor Appearance: Adult Male Raptor - Gilroy's hide is a dark crimson that approaches black at the joints. Scar-white patterns that resemble lightning strikes are spread randomly over his body, though most notable are the ones on his forehead and forearms. He has no feathering unless you count the stubbly "dead" buds where feathering should occur.

Ambrose Durand: Male - 43 - Disgruntled "old" man - Ambrose stared at the massive tower of steel growing before him in the heart of France, grumbling to himself about the absurdity of such a creation. Oblivious to the cried warnings, he had began to approach the contractors office to argue his case when a steel beam sheared him nearly in half; his last conscious thought one of utter surprise before the cold call of death beckoned him into the void.
Raptor Appearance: Durand takes on the body of a mottled brown adult male raptor with no other significant hide markings. Brilliant white feathers sprout from his wrists, shoulders and tail tip.

Hammond Ghar: Male - 372 - Hammond was lost in deep space, froze within a cryogenic escape capsule. What thought the system allowed him only left him to mentally shrug as the capsule slowly finished another rotation and settled into the asteroid belt of an unknown planet.
Raptor Appearance: Young adult female - Hammond's scales are tinted an icy blue and shadowed with swathes of black that seem to swallow the light around them aside from tiny speckles of icy blue glittering as if stars themselves. No feathering aside from a solid set of them on the tail tip.
There are your npcs! Choose which one will die in the opening post! A note: each npc has more to them than these simple descriptions entail and are important in some way, good or bad. Choose wisely.

Also, for story reasons Lilly cannot die in the opening post, so you are limited to four to choose from.

I'd be fine losing the convict. Either him or Farah, if I'm looking at strictly usefulness. But mostly Gilroy.

Also, will I be getting my raptor appearance soon?

Thanks to Arch Lich Burns for the avatar, and Mnementh for the mustache.

Ã”Ã‡Â£Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot him and there'll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland?Ã”Ã‡Ã˜
Ã”Ã‡Ã² Terry Pratchett

Samuel becomes a smaller-than-average adult female raptor; strong, muscular legs compensate greatly for the difference in body size compared to the others[6" or so, I'll let you decide just how much smaller]. Her new form's hide is a gentle blue with two sets of aquamarine haphazardly placed parallel stripes running the length of her body. Aquamarine feathers sprout from her shoulder blades, hips and wrists.

[Sorry about that, I got caught up in creating the npcs!]
Badge, who're you referring to as the old man? I've got two npcs who could technically be referred to as such.